D&D 5E D&D Lore Changes: Multiversal Focus & Fey Goblins of Prehistory

WotC's Jeremy Crawford revealed a couple of the lore changes in Monsters of the Multiverse.

• The big shift is toward the multiverse as the game's main perspective rather than a specific setting. The game is shifting towards a multiversal focus, with a variety of worlds and settings.
• Universe-spanning mythical story beats, such as deep lore on goblinoids going back to 1st Edition, and the gods they had before Maglubiyet. Prior to Magulbiyet unifying them, goblinoids were folk of the feywild in keeping with 'real-world' folklore.
• Changelings aren't just Eberron, but they've been everywhere -- you just don't necessarily know it. Their origin is also in the realm of the fey.

D&D 5E - A Compilation of all the Race Changes in Monsters of the Multiverse

Over on Reddit, user KingJackel went through the video leak which came out a few days ago and manually compiled a list of all the changes to races in the book. The changes are quite extensive, with only the fairy and harengon remaining unchanged. The book contains 33 races in total, compiled and...

www.enworld.org

 

[HammerMan]

But, it's not true that 2e worlds were distinct from each other. That's the opposite of how it was. In 2e, everything was 100% Planescape Compatible all the time. Every single setting got dragged, kicking and screaming under the same umbrella of Planescape. Gods from different settings all inhabited the same planes depending on alignment. Other than Dark Sun, and even then, not really, all settings were part of the Great Wheel and were shoehorned into a single meta-setting.

I though spelljammer did that first... Darksun was a 'closed crystal sphere'

I remember the wizards 3 predating planescape, am I missremembering?

 

[UngeheuerLich]

No it didn't. Mismanagement and hubris, not to mention something just on the legal side of embezzlement via Buck Rogers, collided with the collectible games fad to kill TSR. Having multiple settings was not the problem.

Are you sure? I heard differently. Too much material for too many different Settings and thus, not enough customers. As I said, probably multiple settings can work today without ruining you. With POD and digital distribution, you don´t have to make so much books to have them displayed in stores, only to buy them back later.

 

[JThursby]

Didn't the race options in Volo's have basicaly no Lore in them?

If you mean the monstrous races, they had very little next to their actual statistics, but there was an entire previous chapter dedicated to monstrous lore. For instance, the goblinoids shared 12 pages of lore text and illustration, kobolds had seven, etc. For the regular player options each of them got around a page, which was used very well to create interesting character prompts IMO. They presented natural prompts to develop characters around, such as the Lizardfolk's alien mindset, the Kenku's mimicry restriction, that sort of thing. From what I can tell those prompts have been removed or abridged. We know from the leaks that the Kenku no longer has a mimicry language restriction for example.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I remember the wizards 3 predating planescape, am I missremembering?

That was a long time before Planescape.

 

[Ancalagon]

I'll tell you straight. You have the icon 'publisher' under your user name. The more you push back against other people's products, the less I'm inclided to look at your stuff. That is not a good marketing strategy for your business. You shouldn't be wasting precious time on forums bashing other companies. You should be busy writting, publishing and promoting your game products.

... I'm going to tell you straight.

Almost everyone here is a creator at some level - we create games, we create homebrews, we create PCs. Some of us publish these creations for free on blogs, a few of us are well known published authors, and a few are somewhere in between - maybe having sold an adventure or two on the DM's guild?

It is not because someone is a creator - and maybe with a bit of money on the line, maybe not - that they are not allowed to discuss here about various gaming issues, including trends in design. Maybe I'm wrong, I'm not a moderator, after all. But... neither are you?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Almost everyone here is a creator at some level

Which is why you need to be very careful when you go out to advertise that. We shouldn't be undermining each other.

 

[Mark Craddock]

how very... MCU... I'm not sure I like this, at all.

Yeah, it may just be a coincidence but it seems like everything is part of multiverse right now.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

If you mean the monstrous races, they had very little next to their actual statistics, but there was an entire previous chapter dedicated to monstrous lore. For instance, the goblinoids shared 12 pages of lore text and illustration, kobolds had seven, etc. For the regular player options each of them got around a page, which was used very well to character interesting character prompts IMO. They presented natural prompts to develop characters around, such as the Lizardfolk's alien mindset, the Kenku's mimicry restriction, that sort of thing. From what I can tell those prompts have been removed or abridged. We know from the leaks that the Kenku no longer has a mimicry language restriction for example.

While mimikri speech restriction was a great Idea for flavour, it was very impractical for most people to actually speak that way. And if you think about it, since they could use mimicry for every single word, it was a non-restriction actually.

 

[Laurefindel]

Yeah, it may just be a coincidence but it seems like everything is part of multiverse right now.

It's an in-world way to legitimize (and canonize) inconsistencies, retro-actions, and do-overs.

hum, this sounds more snarky than what I intend to convey; I kinda like the idea.

 

[Reynard]

Are you sure? I heard differently. Too much material for too many different Settings and thus, not enough customers. As I said, probably multiple settings can work today without ruining you. With POD and digital distribution, you don´t have to make so much books to have them displayed in stores, only to buy them back later.

Shannon Applecline's history of TSR in Deigners & Dragons Vol 1 is a really illuminating read.